Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

I don't know about any of you but I am finding Maintenance Windows cause more problems then they help. For instance they interfere with monitor solution tasks, prevent you for running a Job (Collection of Tasks) outside a maintenance window, and cause patching to start outside of it's define patched policy. Am I just configuring it wrong or is everyone else getting frustrated with them too? So I would like to find out how many of you actually use the Maintenence Windows policy?

I've found them more trouble than they are worth.

They may be useful in particularly large environments where multiple teams are using the SMP and you want some governance over when the teams are scheduling things?

They cause me all sorts of grief in troubleshooting.

That said, I think they are one of those things that if you really take a lot of time to plan things out, they are useful.  A LOT of us simply use NS almost in a reactionary state - get whatever done you have to, ASAP.  But there are a lot of other companies where their processes are all VERY structured.  For instance, I had one company with a 4 hr window each month on 1 day to get all patching done including reboot.  That's it.  For companies like this, where everything is sooooo structured, maintenance windows can be useful.

I'm personally finding a lot of people taking them off, but there it is.  :-)

Oh, and many tasks can be set to bypass maintenance windows, to help prevent what you complained about.  Not all..

Yep...it's the "Not all..." thats killing me.

At least personally.  If you find tasks you think SHOULD have that option, call and let us know (yeah, I know, but it's different coming from you) and be sure there's a suggestion here about it.

I disagree, because in a large and global server environment it is a mandatory functionality. You might be right in a client environemnt.

Using maintenance windows is the only way that I have found to guarantee that a task will be run at a certain time/in a certain window.  The "run only if computer is available at exact scheduled time" policy checkbox doesn't appear to really have much bearing on an agent's behavior in the grand scheme of things.

It will cause problems with tasks that you want to ignore the maintenance windows if you don't set them to ignore them.  You'll need to modify your patch agent/policy settings and each individual task/job to ignore maintenance windows if you don't want them to respect the window you have set. I believe managed software delivery policy default settings have them ignore maintenance windows.

If you find that you just want to tell everything to ignore maintenance windows then they probably aren't very useful for you.  I toggle them on and off for items that I want to explicity run only during a maintenance window.